


Conscription

by LacePendragon



Category: RWBY
Genre: First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Massive AU, Military, Sorta AOT Inspired, after the end, dark au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-13 21:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16480058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LacePendragon/pseuds/LacePendragon
Summary: Due to conscription laws, James Ironwood and Qrow Branwen not only both end up in the Atlesian military, but both end up on the same squad. Never before has James been more frustrated, and more turned on, in his entire life.





	Conscription

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written May 2nd, 2017. Reposted October 31st, 2018. Happy Halloween.

Silence hung thickly over the barracks after squads had been assigned and the various recruits were deposited into their barracks. James stood stiffly at the end of his bed, setting down his singular duffel bag and looking around at his fellow military recruits. A blond man wearing headphones phantom boxed on the other side of the room, his bangs hanging in his eyes. A small woman with wide, silver eyes meticulous assembled and reassembled a sniper rifle. A wide man with sideburns and sharp teeth slowly sharpened his knives.

But James’ attention went to the twins he’d heard about so often during basic. Mandatory conscription meant they were pulled into the military against their will when they turned eighteen, but James knew they had a reputation for being absolutely deadly in the field. Qrow and Raven Branwen: trained Grimm killers and absolute demons.

James had heard the whispers in the streets and in the schools. They’d been born and found outside the kingdoms. They weren’t normal.

Some said they weren’t human.

Looking at them – currently perched together on a bunk bed, with Qrow laying down with his hands behind his head and Raven sitting at the other end with her legs drawn up as she flipped through a deck of cards – James couldn’t see the appeal nor the rumours about the two. Frankly, they looked like a pair of street rats with bad attitudes who’d rather be anywhere else.

Although, in fairness to them, that was _precisely_ what they were.

“Do you think we’ll be fighting Grimm any time soon?” asked the guy with sideburns and sharp teeth. He looked around at everyone, a nervous twitch to his shoulders.

“Probably not,” said the girl with the sniper rifle. She was disassembling it again, lining up the polished clean pieces in front of her. “We still have to go through more than just basic training, after all. Didn’t you hear the general out there?”

The sideburns man shook his head.

The girl grinned and tossed her scope into the air. It spun three times before dropping neatly back into her hand. She used it to gesture to the Branwen twins on the bed across the room. “We’ve got the Branwen twins, buddy. We’re not going after normal Grimm.” There was a tease to her voice, a sort of eerie light-heartedness that made James wonder if this woman thought this was all a game.

“Then what _are_ we going after?” asked Raven, leaning her head back to study the woman. She rolled her eyes at the woman’s gun and flicked her long, feather-like hair from her face. Her red eyes were out of place in the room, ten times as intense as her brother’s rusty ones.

“Goliaths,” said the girl.

The man with side burns whimpered.

“You don’t know that for sure,” said James. He sat down on the end of his bed and set down his duffel bag between his legs. He didn’t know who would be his bunkmate, but he was glad to have snagged a bottom bunk.

The door to the barracks swung open and a woman with a severe bun and severe glasses stepped into the room with a duffel bag over her shoulder. She looked over them all, anger burning in her eyes, and she locked eyes with James.

“Ironwood?” she guessed. He nodded. She strode over to him and threw her duffel bag on the top bunk. “I was just transferred to be your partner.” She stuck out her hand. “Glynda Goodwitch.” James shook her hand and looked over at the others, who were all watching him curiously now.

“Ironwood?” echoed Qrow, sitting up. He leaned forward on his raised knees and cocked an eyebrow at James. “Wasn’t your dad committed for treason or some shit?” he asked.

“I am not my father,” said James, firmly.

Qrow snorted, breaking into a lop-sided grin that was more smirk and teeth than anything else. “No,” he said, dragging his gaze up and down James’ body in a way that James could only describe as sexual, “you are definitely not.”

James felt himself redden and looked away, trying to ignore the burning in his ears.

The group settled into their bunks, resting for a while before the call for lights out went up.

James and his squad fell into training easily enough. They had all been through basic, but were forced to redo most of it as a new team, and James often found himself watching them all run the courses instead of being part of them. His shoulder burned from an old injury after too much exertion, and James cursed under his breath every time he had to go to the medical bay to see about fixing it.

No one else knew about his prosthetic arm, nor the scar tissue around his metal shoulder that caused him so much pain.

Weeks passed in training. The squad grew closer. James watched Glynda watch the man with sideburns – Tukson – and train the initial fear reactions out of him. Raven and Qrow continued to stay mostly isolated from the others, while Taiyang – the boxing blond – and Summer – the woman with the sniper rifle – bonded over ways to combine their abilities.

All around them, other squads continued to build themselves into something bigger and better than the sums of their parts, and James was proud to be amongst them. He even found himself making friends with his squad.

Glynda liked books, Taiyang liked sparring, and Summer and he both had a love of weaponry that they could bond over. More than once, Qrow would join them and help with weapon work.

One by one, they built their weapons. One by one, they watched other squads, older squads, get sent out into the world to try and retake Mantle.

One by one, they watched as only parts of those squads returned, if they returned at all.

One by one, James watched the horror of their situation settle over his squad until everyone seemed terrified at the prospect of going out into the world.

Everyone but Qrow and Raven, who seemed completely unaffected by the horrific circumstances of their training.

James, himself, tried not to think too much about the mission ahead of them. He knew the reality of the world. He knew their chances of survival were slim, but that did not stop him from hoping. That did not stop him from training as hard as he could in a desperate attempt to keep his squad alive.

He knew this was his duty. He knew this was his reality.

Three of the kingdoms had already fallen. Vale, Mistral, and Vacuo were long gone. Taken by Grimm big and small until nothing but streaks of blood and piles of broken concrete and twisted steel remained to mark humanities’ fallen monuments. Atlas was the only one left.

There were rumours of an island kingdom, Menagerie, in the south. A kingdom where most of the faunus had fled after being left in the cold during the falls of Mistral and Vale. But without the communication towers, it was impossible to know for sure if such a kingdom existed.

The only way to know for sure was to retake Mantle from the Grimm and reconnect the communications tower there. If Atlas could do that, then they could find the rest of humanity. They could start to rebuild. They could start to _live_ instead of just _survive._

That was the whole purpose of this section of the army after all. To retake. To fight. They weren’t defenders. They weren’t shields. They were weapons, pointed at the enemy in hopes of fighting back. Or so the general said.

James wasn’t sure, anymore, not after seeing so many come back in pieces and in body bags.

So, the night before he and his squad were sent out, James wasn’t in the barracks with the others, listening to their fears and their plans. Instead, he sat near the edge of the camp, perched in a tree branch with a bottle of whiskey at his side that he’d stolen from the COs’ barracks.

They wouldn’t miss it, he told himself. And if they did, it wasn’t like he’d be around to take hell for it.

James took a swig from the bottle and grimaced at the burn before settling back against the tree branch. Below him, James heard a shuffle, then, in a blur of motion, Qrow leaped and sat neatly on the tree branch next to James.

“’Sup, Jimmy?” asked Qrow, his voice a low, terrifying rasp that reminded James more of the Grimm than of a human being. He eyed the bottle and broke into that crooked, toothy grin of his. “Ooh, breaking rules? Naughty.” The teasing in his voice didn’t take the rasp out of it, nor did it distract James from the faint glow in Qrow’s rusty eyes. “May I?” He held out his hand and James handed him the bottle. Qrow took a swig and passed it back.

“What are you doing out here?” asked James.

Qrow shrugged. “Same as you. Trying to stay calm before this all goes to shit.” Qrow leaned back on the branch, his hands balancing him as he looked at James. “You think we’ll come out of this in one piece?” he asked.

James frowned and looked away, unsure what to say.

“Neither do I,” said Qrow. “We ain’t all coming back, Jim, you know that as well as I do.” Qrow sighed and flipped his bangs out of his eyes, then combed them back with one hand. “Fucked up, ain’t it?”

“How did your people survive out in the wild?” asked James. “Obviously, you managed, or else you never would have made it here. Grimm… they attack everything indiscriminately, and there are so _many_ of them.” James stared at Qrow with wide eyes and bit the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything else.

Qrow shrugged. “Everyone says something different, you know?” said Qrow. He leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees, his legs dangling and swinging off the branch. In the distance, James heard the howls of beowolves. He swallowed hard against the bile rising in his throat. “Some people say that we smell like death, others say we were just lucky, and some…” Qrow grinned crookedly at James, cruel and red. “Some say something else entirely.”

James frowned. “What do _you_ say?” he asked. He took another swig from the whiskey and grimaced at the burn. He held it out to Qrow, who took it and took a sip.

“I know the truth, that’s all that matters. Works the same for Raven,” said Qrow. He eyed the whiskey, shrugged, and took a deep gulp of it before handing it to James. “We aren’t just products of our past and our heritage, James. You know that as well as I do.”

James nodded. “Fair enough.” He looked out to the horizon and squinted into the darkness, wondering if he could spy the Goliaths from this distance. It wasn’t likely. The walls that surrounded Atlas, coupled with the electrically powered dome that covered the kingdom, kept the Grimm away.

It was part of why faunus had such a hard time with the kingdom – the high-pitched hum if you got too close to the dome drove them to madness.

“So, say we die when we go out there,” said Qrow, cocking his head to James. He said it so casually that James jumped and just barely saved the whiskey from slipping from his hands. “You going out there with regrets?”

James frowned and thought back on everything over his lifetime. He couldn’t think of anything major, and shook his head. “You?” he asked.

Qrow leveled him with a significant look and said, “Just one.”

James’ frown deepened. “Shouldn’t you remedy that?” He shrugged. “You’re all about living in the moment, aren’t you?” There was a vague teasing to his voice, beneath his confusion, and he watched as Qrow seemed to pause, shake his head, and chuckle.

“You are something else, Jim,” said Qrow in that same low rasp that James was simultaneously terrified of and intrigued by.

Out here, in the darkness, that voice did something else entirely to him, setting his senses alight and his nerves tingling. He didn’t know what it meant.

He wanted to.

Qrow shifted closer to him, until they were brushing hips and opposite arms. He was near James’ metal arm, but he didn’t seem to notice it. James wasn’t sure if he was grateful or not.

“No regrets, right, Jim?” murmured Qrow. James swallowed and nodded, unsure of where this was going but not sure he wanted to stop it.

“No regrets,” whispered James.

Qrow studied him a moment longer, then, taking an audible breath, he closed the distance between them, pressing a soft kiss to James’ lips.

James sucked in a breath when his lips met Qrow’s, his mind going blank and his entire body alight with the shock of it. Qrow held it for only a second before pulling back. He studied James and James stared back, unsure of how to respond.

“Qrow?” whispered James his voice hoarser than it had been a moment before.

“No regrets,” said Qrow again. He cracked a smile, and, for the first time since James had met him, the smile wasn’t crooked, but even and genuine, and it even touched his eyes – wrinkling them around the corners. “Good night, Jim.” With that, Qrow dropped out of the tree and disappeared, leaving James to sit against the trunk and wonder, in those few hours before he and his squad were deployed into a war zone, just what had happened.


End file.
